COLUMN: Braves Fans Shouldn’t Panic After That Road Trip

Despite how it might feel right now, the Atlanta Braves are going to be fine.

Atlanta Braves pitcher Max Fried had a good outing on Sunday against the Los Angeles Dodgers, but they took advantage of his mistakes and got four runs via homers off of the lefty. / Kiyoshi Mio-USA TODAY Sports

The Atlanta Braves stumbled last week. 

The Braves went 1-5 on their most recent road trip, a swing across the West Coast, only winning one game against the Seattle Mariners and then getting swept by the Los Angeles Dodgers. It’s led to a lot of hand-wringing from within the fanbase and misguided “the Braves are in trouble” comments from national media. 

And let’s call a spade a spade: Things aren’t great for the Braves at the moment. Across that six-game road trip, Atlanta hitters batted .168/.218/.244 with 58 strikeouts and only eight extra-base hits. They stranded thirty-one runners on base and scored a total of fourteen runs, just barely over two runs a game.

Ronald Acuña Jr. has forty strikeouts in just thirty-two games played this season. He’s already surpassed last season’s number of multi-strikeout games and his forty punchouts are almost half of last season’s total of eighty-four. Matt Olson’s batting just .197 and Austin Riley’s hitting at a .237 clip. 

Here’s the thing: It’s fine.

It’s not great, mind you, but it’s fine. 

Despite all of these struggles, Atlanta’s still the third-highest scoring team in runs per game, at 5.09. They’re 20-12, the last team to hit double-digit losses on the season. 

They’re going to be fine. 

Because every team struggles, and Atlanta is no exception to that. 

We can all agree that the 2023 Atlanta Braves were one of the best offensive teams we’ve ever seen, right? They tied the all-time single-season homer record, launching 307 homers. They led baseball in almost every single offensive category, scoring an absurd 947 runs. 

But they struggled for stretches, too. Speaking of bad road trips, remember that Toronto Blue Jays sweep in mid-May? The Braves got doubled up on runs, 14-7, and lost all three games. Remember heading out to Oakland Athletics and barely squeaking out one win in three tries? 

What about the six-game homestand in mid July against the Chicago White Sox and Arizona Diamondbacks, where you won the first game and the last game while getting outscored by seventeen runs in the middle three losses? 

These things happen when you play 162 games. You’re going to have those situations where you get the combo of facing a good opponent, having a rough few days, and having some bad luck.

And I don’t mean “bad luck” as in “the ball took some weird bounces”. I mean those fluky things that happen in baseball - the things that even out over the course of 162 games but not over a three-game series or a six-game road trip. Ronald Acuña Jr getting picked off of second base right before Austin Riley hits his first home run in three weeks. Matt Olson getting thrown out trying to stretch a single into a double right before Marcell Ozuna homers. 

Are there things to figure out for this Braves team? There absolutely is...but these players are too good to not figure it out. This isn’t going to continue for the entire season, no matter how likely it feels in the moment, right now, while you’re living it.